The excellent news, from Asia’s perspective, is that the US doesn’t have such political-cultural or territorial designs on the area. The dangerous information is that Washington nonetheless wishes to exert leverage over this area, by way of its commerce coverage and using “poison capsule” termination clauses.
EXTENDING AMERICA’S CULTURE WARS TO EUROPE
For many years, US-Europe ties have been underpinned by shared liberal norms, together with sturdy financial and safety ties. Even the 2017 Nationwide Safety Technique (NSS) doc, printed by the primary Trump administration, famous that the US “is safer when Europe is affluent and steady, and can assist defend our shared pursuits and beliefs.”
The recently released 2025 NSS, nonetheless, reframed this relationship. On one hand, Europe is deemed “strategically and culturally important” to the USA. But, the doc goes past the standard criticism of Europe’s failures to satisfy defence spending pledges.
It takes goal at a fusion of politics and tradition, warning of “civilisational erasure” attributable to insurance policies that erode Europe’s “nationwide identities and self-confidence”. The insurance policies in query embody mass migration, which is portrayed as a destabilising blight on Europe’s social and cultural cohesion. Censorship can be a bugbear for US officers, with the assumption that far-right views are unfairly focused and suppressed by European governments.
Put merely, the NSS implies that Europe’s liberal management threatens US pursuits by destabilising the continent. The answer, of their eyes, is to make Europe align extra intently with the Trump administration’s political values, extending the tradition warfare that has pervaded US society for political achieve.
